You are looking to take advantage of and enjoy your family time to the maximum, to rejuvenate week after week, to plan your business meetings and events in an uncommon place outside of the ordinary and routine, where the exclusive features, services, diversity of activities, natural surroundings, the tranquillity best complement each other. We have this and much more.

We understand that with just 24 hours in a day, you do not have the luxury to combine business and pleasure as much as you would like to. We mix these two themes perfectly and take them to a different level.

My mom always holds a very dear spot in my heart, as I’m sure most moms do in their children’s hearts .

While growing up in a new (to me) country and culture, my wise mother often had to calm my spirit and sooth my wounded soul. I was homesick for my grandfather’s farm and missed my animal friends. The new friends and acquaintances I was making were often puzzling and some were also bullies. As a five year old, I was at the same time struggling to settle into my new surroundings, and wishing I didn’t have to.

Today I realise that as a then 35 year old woman with 4 children under 10, and not speaking or understanding a word of French or English, my mom had far more challenges. But she was fiercely determined to succeed in her new home and adopted country. She had no choice. She had convinced my father to leave his comfortable position in Spain; and uproot all the family for a possibly better future in Montreal, Canada. Her fiercely Spanish pride would never allow her to admit defeat and return back as a failed immigrant.

Growing older and hopefully also wiser, I began to appreciate my parent’s struggles and successes. They both worked hard, scrimped and saved to buy a home in the suburbs, while never denying us any of our necessities. We were always well dressed, fed healthy and nourishing food, and yearly went to the New Jersey or Maryland beaches.

Today, as a 91 year old great-grandmother and head of a wide spread clan of five children in three continents, my mother is still the wisest woman I know and love.

As I reflect on the significance of this holiday, my thoughts always turn to the year 2004. Shortly after Father’s Day on that year, and one day after this photo was taken, my father died. So while I celebrate my mom’s special day, I know she is also a widow.

Hey you all. I was invited by my friend, Tiffany, co-owner of La Villa, to meet and greet Victoria, a real queen of blogs. She, as well as all her friends, are celebrating her third anniversary. I had a blast at her party, attended by more than a 100 of her Bogota friends and fans, and discovered a very WISE person with a passion and a voice that resonates true feelings. Her blogs are the manifestations of her encounters and explorations of Bogota, Colombia and many other South American countries. Enjoy!

Banana Skin Flip Flops may not be the New York Times but because Bogotá, especially among our little corner of English speakers, is more of a village than a city, I do meet people who’ve read it.

Sometimes they’ll write to me after our meeting and say: “You never said you were that Banana Girl,” or, better, “I feel like I know you already,” to which I always mumble something about the “carefully constructed version of myself I put on the Internet” and insist I am not a worry-stricken, culturally-confused, disasterous-at-dating blonde woman who runs around Bogotá in too-tall shoes, but actually someone who is always cool, calm and well put together.

I started Banana Skin Flip Flops to let my family and friends know I was safe during my six month trip to South America. At first it was awful – the classic ramblings of a journalist who’d…

Hi to everybody. While updating Juan Guerra’s Google+ account today, I came across some awesome info I just had to share with you.

Victoria Generao has posted an article about the health benefits of turmeric. Written by Sayer Ji, the founder and director of www.greenmedinfo.com and an advisory board member at the National Health Federation, an international nonprofit, consumer-education, health-freedom organization. He co-authored the book Cancer Killers: The Cause Is The Cure, and is working on another one with Tania Melkonian titled EATomology: An Edible Philosophy of Food”.

In his revealing work : “Turmeric Extract Puts Drugs For Knee Osteoarthritis To Shame” Ji champions turmeric’s impressive role in reducing inflammation of the joints. Itis a must read for for the millions of sufferers of this debilitating disease. I personally know a 62 year old woman who has endured this painful and crippling condition for many years. It has literally made walking very painful as well as affecting her job and social life. I will certainly tell her about this nearly miraculous solution.

The conventional treatments for this auto-immune disease are “

non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)” These must be taken “daily for arthritis and related inflammatory conditions”. “NSAID drugs like diclofenac … like most pharmaceutical anti-inflammatory drugs have been linked to adverse health effects such as increased cardiac mortality, miscarriage and seizure”. Ji wants you to “Consider too, that there are over 100 known adverse health effects associated with this chemical class of drugs, whereas turmeric (and curcumin) has been linked to over 600 beneficial ones — not exactly a hard choice to make, when it comes to risk-benefit analysis”. Ji also points out the sad fact “human research on the health benefits of turmeric is sparse, mainly due to the lack of capital available to fund expensive clinical trials”. He continues by showing us the results of a study that found that “curcuminoid” an “extract of turmeric was able to reduce inflammation in patients suffering from knee osteoarthritis”.

The study, published in “Indonesian Journal of Internal Medicine” in April, 2012 confirmed “thousands of preclinical studies indicating turmeric’s therapeutic value” and concludes that “curcuminoid … was capable of significantly decreasing the secretion of the inflammatory COX-2 enzyme”

Mr.Jiobserve’s that ” few yet realize that this common kitchen spice may provide a suitable drug alternative for common health conditions”.

Please share this valuable and possibly life saving info with someone you know who has arthritis or other ailments ending with “tis”.

For additional research on natural alternatives to common NSAID drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen, read the following articles:

Hi my name is Juan Antonio and this is my first blog so please bear with me as I stumble along. I have a passion for health and wellness topics as well as my personal growth and I hope to share these with you.

The most important thing about being healthy is it’s not hard to do. You basically have to make simple choices that involve what you eat, how you cook and how much exercise and rest you get.

When shopping for food choose fresh instead of canned or frozen fruits and vegetables. Select whole grain breads and cereals that are lower in fat, sugar and salt. Milk and other dairy products such yogurt and cheese now come in skim,1% or 2% kinds that are better for you. Eat more vegetables and fruits than meat. Use meat alternatives such as fish and beans combined with rice to satisfy your protein needs. I eat fresh salmon or trout at least twice a week.

Cook with small amounts of unsaturated fats such as canola, olive and soybean. Limit your consumption of butter, hard margarine, lard and shortening and choose soft margarines low in saturated and trans fats.

Avoid food and beverages high in calories,fats and sugar or salt.

Drink at least six pints of water a day and avoid sugar-laden beverages. Green tea is very high in antioxidants beneficial to your continued good health.

Be active every day! Walk briskly at least 30 to 60 minutes daily in periods of at least 10 minutes.